Dimitrov identified Imperial Japan as explicitly fascist several times in his writings on the United Front. I consider Dimitrov to be the authority on identifying fascism in the prewar period, and later attempts to restrict its definition to be revisionist. A good example of this "restrictionist" tendency is Jason Stanley's 2020 book "How Fascism Works".
They learned nothing from Mussolini, and about the only contact they had with the Italians was hosting a few submarines in Indonesia. Then when the Italians switched sides in '43, they took the subs for their own and bundled the sailors off into the legendarily brutal Japanese POW camp system.
Dimitrov identified Imperial Japan as explicitly fascist several times in his writings on the United Front. I consider Dimitrov to be the authority on identifying fascism in the prewar period, and later attempts to restrict its definition to be revisionist. A good example of this "restrictionist" tendency is Jason Stanley's 2020 book "How Fascism Works".
They learned nothing from Mussolini, and about the only contact they had with the Italians was hosting a few submarines in Indonesia. Then when the Italians switched sides in '43, they took the subs for their own and bundled the sailors off into the legendarily brutal Japanese POW camp system.